Marius von Essen is a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California in Los Angeles. With a PhD in Earth System Science from Stanford University, he is interested in how governance approaches at the subnational scale can reduce harmful land use change in the tropics while improving the livelihoods of the people who live in and depend on these ecosystems. Increasingly, he is interested in the role that institutions - and the people that inhabit them - play in affecting these changes, and under what conditions they can be most effective.

Akane Nishimura, Ph.D., is an ecologist who serves as Program Associate, Impact Assessment for the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA. Akane conducted her dissertation research in Central Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) on succession, fire cycles, and climate change in highly degraded tropical forests dominated by invasive grasses and ferns. She is passionate about tropical forest conservation and working with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) and other marginalized groups. Prior to joining the GCF Task Force, Akane has worked as a biology consultant, small business owner, university lecturer, and environmental chemist/scientist. She has volunteered for many nonprofits, including as a GIS Project Coordinator for the Orangutan Foundation International and as a Tutor Coordinator for School on Wheels. She is currently serving as Board President of Friends of the Silverado Children’s Center. Akane received a B.A. in Environmental Chemistry from UCSD and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UCLA.

Linnan is a Climate Change and Methane Policy Fellow at CLEE. Her work focuses on cross sector methane emissions reduction at the local, state, national, and international level, with the intent to move solutions to policy and scale. Linnan came to CLEE from the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Global Methane team, where she led the research and analytics in Asia-Pacific region to advance oil and gas methane policy and best practices through collaborations and engagements with international institutions and key agencies. Prior to the methane world, Linnan led the EDF State Climate team’s work to advance climate policies in Michigan and cross-cutting research and analytics to rapidly cut U.S. state-level greenhouse gas emissions, deliver air quality and other benefits to communities, and ensure a just clean energy transition. While at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Linnan supported the development of U.S. federal energy efficiency standards. Linnan also worked at the Energy Division of the California Public Utilities Commission on proceedings and regulations related to resource adequacy, energy procurement and transportation electrification. Globally, she has spent time in Germany and China on international development projects related to energy access, climate finance and water sanitation.

Kimberly Clausing holds the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. Professor Clausing is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. During the first part of the Biden Administration, Clausing was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the US Department of the Treasury, serving as the lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy.